Ok, so while lurking here in the forums and reading all sorts of exciting topics and recipe ideas I have been going a little hog wild over the summer with mead making and experimenting with various concepts and mead batches. Most of my exuberance was probably from discovering I really love mead but I dont have any to drink and its sooo darn expensive in the stores so I'll make my own but it takes too long to ferment/clear/age and become drinkable and I still dont have any to drink so I'll start another batch, etc. Compound that with apparently I didnt really know what I was doing at first and so my first batch or two was not the greatest quality blah, blah...
Sorry for the ramble but the point i think is I thought I was finally on the right track and getting as much pointers from GM posters as possible, I decided to go balls out and try some big melomels. Lurking around I found some good ideas for a Mango Mel and a Plum Mel so I made a 6 gallon batch of each. I'll spare the recipe details unless you really want them, but the main point is the fruit addition.
For the Plum Mel: 24lbs of fruit (before destoning) in primary
For the Mango Mel: 15 lbs fruit in primary, 5 lbs in secondary
This is mainly based on the fact that I love big flavors and my main complaint with commercial meads is that they taste "weak". This also seems to be Oskaar's MO so I figured I couldn't go wrong...
...then it came time to rack. Obviously, i noticed beforehand a huge sediment layer on the bottom of the bucket. Like about 3gallons-worth.
Previously, I made a berry mel with a similar amout of fruit and racking was pretty easy since the berries mostly stayed intact and I used a colander/meshbag combo to keep my racking cane from getting clogged, then juiced the berries that were left afterward and still got a good 5+ gallons into the secondary.
But for both of these, once i got down to the sediment layers, my meshbag/colander combo proved useless. The sediment and fruit is about the consistency of a cross between applesauce and babyfood, there is no way to rack around it. And since I dont have any kind of specialized equipment I don't see how I can filter the solids out to get the goodstuff into secondary. Basically, 3 gallons of precious mead wasted in each batch which x2 equates to a whole 6 gallon carboy of mead that had so much potential right down the garbage disposal!!! :sad2:
Have you guys had this problem too? I know there must be a better way, but i don't know what it could be. How do you guys deal with the fruit residue? I'm so depressed... :sad10:
Sorry for the ramble but the point i think is I thought I was finally on the right track and getting as much pointers from GM posters as possible, I decided to go balls out and try some big melomels. Lurking around I found some good ideas for a Mango Mel and a Plum Mel so I made a 6 gallon batch of each. I'll spare the recipe details unless you really want them, but the main point is the fruit addition.
For the Plum Mel: 24lbs of fruit (before destoning) in primary
For the Mango Mel: 15 lbs fruit in primary, 5 lbs in secondary
This is mainly based on the fact that I love big flavors and my main complaint with commercial meads is that they taste "weak". This also seems to be Oskaar's MO so I figured I couldn't go wrong...
...then it came time to rack. Obviously, i noticed beforehand a huge sediment layer on the bottom of the bucket. Like about 3gallons-worth.
Previously, I made a berry mel with a similar amout of fruit and racking was pretty easy since the berries mostly stayed intact and I used a colander/meshbag combo to keep my racking cane from getting clogged, then juiced the berries that were left afterward and still got a good 5+ gallons into the secondary.
But for both of these, once i got down to the sediment layers, my meshbag/colander combo proved useless. The sediment and fruit is about the consistency of a cross between applesauce and babyfood, there is no way to rack around it. And since I dont have any kind of specialized equipment I don't see how I can filter the solids out to get the goodstuff into secondary. Basically, 3 gallons of precious mead wasted in each batch which x2 equates to a whole 6 gallon carboy of mead that had so much potential right down the garbage disposal!!! :sad2:
Have you guys had this problem too? I know there must be a better way, but i don't know what it could be. How do you guys deal with the fruit residue? I'm so depressed... :sad10: